The Liberties You're Taking | Coco

The Liberties You're Taking

                If you made the trip to Santa Cecilia, it'd be a miracle if you could get through without encountering Mexico's two most spirited mariachis. Ernesto de la Cruz and Héctor Rivera had been practically assaulting the plaza with their performances since they'd first gotten a guitar in their respective hands, and it's still a miracle how neither of them got into (too much) trouble.

Most people decided it was by virtue of their charms. Ernesto was movie-star material with his strong jaw and smoldering eyes, and Héctor...well, Héctor was Héctor. He didn't have Ernesto's looks—unless you asked him, of course—and his limbs seemed to have a mind of their own whenever he was on-stage. That said, the sheer joy he had while performing was enough to draw eyes to him—his smile was probably the biggest and most infectious one in all of Santa Cecilia. And, of course, he provided the music.

See, for all of Ernesto's charm, for all of his powerful voice and confident stage presence, he actually wasn't all that great of a musician. Oh, he could play his guitar, and play it well...provided he had music to learn from. But sounds didn't stick naturally in his head. Héctor's head, meanwhile, was full of songs—the most inspired of which ended up scribbled in a beaten notebook he'd kept on him for years—and he was known for being able to play a song after just hearing it once. That sort of made up for the gangly limbs and just half-decent singing voice.

But, when he and Ernesto worked together, it was magic.

So when they were performing, they were stars. When they weren't, they were (sometimes) likeable layabouts with their heads in the clouds. No families to speak of, no real roots aside from their little "Casita de la Música"—which was little more than a shack that just had enough room for two beds—and dreams of the fame and fortune that would come when they made it big.

Of course, they had to actually make it first.

Oh, certainly, they were trying. Ernesto, charmer that he was, managed to find friends who had friends off in the big cities, and at least once a month, they hopped on the back of a train in their best mariachi suits and, if Ernesto was particularly suave and if Héctor's quick-talking actually worked, they got all the way to their gigs without getting kicked off. But then it was always back to Santa Cecilia and back to the square.

"We need to get out of this town," Ernesto complained one night after a late train ride home. He dropped onto the steps of the plaza's mirador, too weary to make it all the way back to their house. "It's suffocating us."

Héctor dropped down lightly beside him, plucking idly at his guitar strings. "You know, you keep saying that right after spending a day saying 'No one's listening, let's go home.' These are some pretty mixed signals, amigo."

"And then I remember that no one listens here, either." Ernesto dragged a hand down his face. "What's wrong with us, Héctor? We should be the most famous names in Mexico by now, but we're stuck in Santa Cecilia of all places. Did we make God angry or something?"

"Oh, no, God loves us. That's the only way we're still alive after all we get up to." Héctor snapped his fingers. "No, I've got it. Remember when you knocked over the offerings on Señor Olguin's grave last Día de Muertos? You made him angry, and now everyone thinks we're layabouts."

"They've always thought we were layabouts."

"Ay, really? And you didn't tell me?" Héctor leaned against him with a sigh. "Some amigo you are. I thought all well-respected young men got chased around by angry mamás and booted off trains. Now I feel like a real ass."